10
the hedonic sense is the balance between experienced positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). A classic theory is the Hedonic Treadmill theory, originally proposed by Philip Brickman and Donald Campbell (1971). This theory suggests that people adapt to both good and bad events and return, over time, to their hedonic set point. For example, after an extremely good event, such as marrying the person of his or her dreams, a person initially reacts with strong PA but eventually adapts and returns to his or her baseline level of PA. A similar adaption process occurs for negative events. A person reacts to a bad event with strong NA but eventually adapts and returns to his or her baseline level of NA. A particular ruthless quality of the Hedonic Treadmill is that negative events produce relatively more intense and longer-lasting affective reactions than positive events: we adapt more quickly to good events than to bad events (Brickman et al., 1978). However, in a recent review of the Hedonic Treadmill, Ed Diener and colleagues (2006) proposed that adaptation is not nearly as inevitable or automatic as is implied by the original theory. The rate and extent of adaptation to various events show wide variability across individuals, and there are opportunities to "overcome" the Hedonic Treadmill by employing strategies that stimulate cognitive reappraisals, that is, re-thinking a given situation. Given this premise, researchers have introduced and validated a variety of strategies to increase happiness. But although widely available in literature and validated to be useful, not many people seem to pick up those strategies by implementing them into their daily lives. Comprehension is one thing; action another. Here is an opportunity for design, by seducing, stimulating, or challenging people to overcome the Hedonic Treadmill and other barriers to their happiness through designed interventions. An example for is Martin Seligman and colleagues' (2005) "gratitude visit": Participants had one week to write and deliver a letter of gratitude in person to someone, who had been especially kind to them but had never been properly thanked. In fact, this simple exercise led to a significant increase in happiness directly after the exercise (compared to a placebo control group), which then lasted for a month. While these kinds of activities make us happy – at least for a while – it requires some external impulse to actually do it. This is typical for eudaimonic happiness. The hedonic is more obvious to us and much easier to implement. The distinction between Hedonism and Eudaimonia is sometimes referred to as "the pleasurable life versus the good life." Note that the distinction is artificial: A good life is also a pleasurable life. Aristotle, himself, saw pleasure as an integral part of eudaimonic living in the sense of an outcome and the more recent research literature is rife with examples of how Eudaimonia and Hedonics intertwine (King, 2008). Many aspects of the meaningful life (e.g. warm relationships with others, personal mastery) are strong sources of enjoyment and hedonic pleasure. For possibility-driven design, however, the "pleasurable-life/hedonism" versus "good-life/eudaimonia" distinction is useful. We may need two different strategies to design for happiness through identifying new possibilities. One is to design for